Carl Parker's archive

I’ve been struck lately by how quickly each presidential campaign attacks the other for the slightest misstatement. A most recent attack on President Obama grew out of his remark that none of us got to be successful on our own.

Listening to pundits and some Republican advocates, I keep hearing the opinion that big money authorized by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision will not really make a difference in politics. When I hear this, I am reminded of a common saying I’ve heard for many years: “Money talks and BS walks.”

There’s an old, old, adage taken from Shakespeare that goes, “A rose by any other name smells as sweet.” No doubt a tax by any other name is still a tax. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas, a chief apologist for the Republican Party, finally uttered something I agree with. Thomas, in a recent piece commenting on the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act, said that any time you take money from the people and give it to the government, it’s a tax.

There was once a farmer who decided he would save money, so instead of buying the full sack of seed corn, he bought only two-thirds of the amount he had purchased the year before. After sowing the seeds on his field, he eventually harvested the crop. To his great surprise, the crop had only yielded two-thirds of the bounty of the season before.

Of late, I have been giving serious thought to simply giving up. It occurs to me that I could be wrong about my philosophy of life and economic policy of the United States. I’ve always thought that if you infused enough money into the lower end of the economic spectrum, rich folks would figure out a way to end up with most of it. Alas, perhaps there is some chance that the Koch brothers, right-wing nuts and other Republicans are right.

While we harbor no disrespect for the Wall Street Journal who called us “that scrappy little paper from Southeast Texas,” we prefer to think of ourselves as simple seekers of the truth. We’re of the opinion that headlines and sound bites never tell the whole story. Our readers demand all the facts, facets and flavors of every story or event. And, they expect to be informed, educated and stirred to action.